'It must be a beautiful spot when the sun shines,' she said, peering through the rain at the orchards. 'What a pity the storm is blowing all the blossom off those trees.' Torn white petals were blowing like confetti past the car, many of them sticking to the windows in the rain. Suddenly the car began to make a strange choking sound, and Alex muttered under his breath. Staring through the windscreen, Deborah said anxiously, 'Alex, the bonnet…'
Thin coils of steam curled up at the sides of the bonnet. Alex groaned. That damned radiator! We're running out of water to cool the engine and the car is overheating.'
At that moment she caught a glimpse of a green roof through the curtain of rain. 'Is that the house?'
, The steam was growing quickly. Alex slowed the car to a crawl, grimly watching the bonnet. 'We may just get there before it does too much damage,' he said. 'We'll have to ring the nearest garage and get them to fit a new radiator. I suspected it was badly dented. It must be full of holes. We've been losing water ever since we hit that tree.'
He pulled up a hundred yards from the house. A cloud of steam was rising from the bonnet by then. 'I dare not lift it or the engine will be drowned in rain,' he said irritably. He opened the door and got out. Deborah followed and they began to run towards the house, drenched before they had gone more than a short way. Lightning split the dark sky. She gave an instinctive cry of fright, and Alex looked hack at her. 'It can't hurt you,' he said flatly. 'If you can see it, it can be nowhere near you. You're quite safe.'
'I don't like it,' she confessed, putting down her head and running harder towards the house.
She barely got a glimpse of it before they were at the front door. Alex banged loudly on it, pushing Deborah under the slight overhang of the lintel to escape the worst of the rain. There was no answer. He banged with his fist, shouting, 'Mother, it's Alex!'
Silence answered them. She looked at him questioningly. 'What are we going to do?'
Alex tried the door, but it was locked. 'Stay here,' he said grimly, moving round the side of the house. Deborah leaned against the door, her chest heaving after her running, brushing the wet hair out of her eyes. Thunder rolled again and again as if it reverberated around the hills. Through a line of willows she saw the muddy brown waters of the river whirling rapidly, realising that the cottage stood a mere hundred feet from the green banks.
Hearing the front door open, she turned, expecting to see a stranger, but it was not Alex's mother, but Alex himself. 'I had to break the kitchen window,' he said tersely. 'Get in before you drown.'
She went into the house, finding herself in a narrow vestibule, from which led two doors at right angles. Alex shut the from door and pushed her through one of the others. In astonishment and bewilderment she surveyed a totally empty room. She turned towards him, her eyes wide. 'Alex…'
'I've seen it,' he said grimly. 'All the furniture has gone. Even the kitchen is practically bare. There's not a sign of anything.'
'Your mother must have moved,' she said faintly. Her eyes stared at him, taking in all the implications of their discovery. She swallowed. 'There's no one here and…' Her voice trailed away in alarm.
His mouth hard, he said, 'The car's out of action. It's miles to the next village and I don't propose to walk through that storm, anyway. We're stuck here, like it or not.'
She felt like bursting into tears. 'How can we get back to Nice in time to catch our plane?'
He surveyed her unsmilingly. 'We can't,' he said tersely.
Her face went white. She backed away from him, staring at him with bitterly angry eyes. 'You planned it,' she burst out. 'You've brought me here deliberately. You knew very well the house was empty. You've trapped me!'
Alex's face darkened in rage. He advanced towards her too quickly for her to be able to evade him. His hands bit into her shoulders, shaking her violently. 'And I suppose I deliberately ran the car into that tree, did I? And talked you into coming with me? After last night I'd rather be trapped in a snakepit than cooped up alone with you, you cold-blooded little hitch!' His eyes blazed at her contemptuously. 'You're perfectly safe with me, Deborah. I have no intention of touching you. I can't even stand the sight of you.'
'Or my touch,' she flung, unbearably wounded by what he said, and remembering his reaction when she touched him in the car.
His lips drew back in a snarl. 'Who asked you to touch me? In future keep your hands away from me. We have to stay here until the rain stops, but there's no reason why we should stay in the same room. You can go and see what there is to eat in the kitchen. I expect Mother left a few odd items. I'll go up and look around upstairs. We're best apart, you and I. When we get back to London you can leave the firm and take your three months' pay with you. It'll be worth a few hundred quid to get rid of you.'
'You can keep your money,' she said bitterly. 'I'll be too glad to get away from you to give a damn about it,'
Alex flung her away violently and slammed out of the room. She heard his feet on the uncarpeted stairs, then the silence settled back, bringing with it the unceasing swish of the rain in the sky outside. Lightning crashed again, followed soon by thunder. Deborah sighed deeply, then she began to look for the kitchen.
The cottage was small, she found, built on a slight slope above the river. Two steps led from the empty room in which she stood to the small kitchen beyond. Wall cupboards and an ancient kitchen range were all it contained apart from the sink. She opened the cupboards and was surprised and relieved to find a number of tins, but nothing perishable. There was neither sugar nor tea, neither coffee nor bread. They would be able to eat, anyway, she sighed, and presumably drink water.
The house was chill. She shivered, prowling around the kitchen. They would have to light a fire, but there seemed to be no form of kindling anywhere. Maybe Alex could find some wood in one of the small outbuildings she could glimpse from the window. She had no coat with her. It was going to get colder.
Alex's voice called her from above, and she went through into the vestibule and went upstairs. He was on the landing. The floor, she was interested to see, was carpeted. Then, through an open door, she saw furniture, and went into the room with an expression of surprise, finding herself in a large bedroom. It contained a bed, stripped bare, and the usual bedroom furniture, comfortable and a little old-fashioned. She looked round at Alex, her heart turning over in alarm again. He looked back at her with a savage smile.
'Providential for the plan you think I'm cherishing, isn't it?' he asked unpleasantly.
She drew a shaky breath. 'All right, Alex, I'll apologise. I didn't really believe you planned it.?
'Didn't you?' His tone was scathing. His eyes ran down her body, stripping her deliberately with their angry gaze. 'Now that you've put the idea into my head it might not be such a bad one. If we're here long, boredom may drive me to amuse myself in your direction.'
'That isn't funny, Alex,' she retorted, stung.
'Isn't it? I think it's very funny,' he said sourly. 'You do realise, I suppose, that Robin is never going to believe you missed that plane by accident? When you don't come back for this precious weekend with his family he'll assume you preferred to spend it in bed with me.'
Deborah's face burned. She turned away and walked out of the room to explore the other rooms. There was a tiny bathroom, she discovered, and one other room, a low-ceilinged room which was stacked with canvases and the other apparatus of painting; an easel, scores of tubes of paints, brushes and many other objects which seemed to litter the place, so that there was very little room to move since the room itself was tiny.
'My mother's studio,' Alex said flatly.
'It's in a terrible mess,' she said, dismayed by such disorder.
He looked at her contemptuously. 'Yes, that's all that would strike you. What a mundane mind you have, Deborah!' The cruel lips twisted. 'Or should I say Miss Portman? Maybe we should revert to our formal relationship again. Since we've been in France we seem to have lapsed into intimacy, and that would never
do, would it?'
She forced down a desire to hit him. 'I've found some tins of food,' she said flatly. 'I can make us a supper of sorts if you could light that old range.'
'There should be plenty of wood in the woodshed,' he said, his voice tight. 'I'll see what I can do.'
'We ought to have a fire in one of the rooms downstairs,' she said. 'The house is very cold and we have no coats with us.'
'Where are we going to eat?' he asked sardonically. 'Not in the bedroom, I presume. It might give me the wrong ideas.' 'We'll eat in the room beside the fire you light,' she said, ignoring him. 'I found plates and cutlery in the cupboards.' He brows creased. 'It's very odd, all the same. Why should your mother clear the whole downstairs like this yet leave the things upstairs?'
'She was probably moving into the village but something stopped them in the middle of it,' he said, shrugging. 'We'll find our tomorrow.'
'I'll start making that meal, then,' she said. 'I think you'd better get that stove started first. If you can't manage it I expect I can always cook on the fire.'
He looked at her in sarcastic mockery 'So efficient, Miss Portman.'
Lightning tore the sky apart and she gave a shriek of fear. Alex stared at her, his eyes narrowed. 'Yet you have oddly disarming feminine characteristics,' he said heavily. 'Who would have believed you were so afraid of lightning?' His grey eyes brooded on her. 'What else frightens you, Deborah?'
For a moment their eyes held, then she turned and went downstairs to begin the meal.
6
Deborah searched the cupboard, trying to decide which of the tins to use. Alex went darting out into the rain, a newspaper he had found carried over his head. She decided to start with one of the tins of soup followed by a tin of ham served with asparagus tips. She was about to open them, sighing over the lack of choice, when Alex came back, carrying a bundle of wood under one arm, a garden trug under the other. He grinned at her, his face triumphant. 'Eggs,' he announced, depositing the trug on the range.
She peered incredulously at the heaped eggs. 'Where on earth…?'
'My mother's chickens,' he explained cheerfully. They have a run up at the end of the garden under some trees. I took a look in their nesting boxes and found these… some of them were sitting on them, and I suspect no one has been near them for several days. But it will help for supper, won't it?'
'It's marvellous,' she said delightedly. 'How about lobster bisque followed by asparagus omelette?'
His brows rose. 'Good God, I knew you were efficient, Miss Portman, but that sounds like a miracle!'
'Courtesy of your mother's larder,' she grinned. 'The eggs will be much nicer than ham and asparagus, don't you think?'
His eyes were restlessly moving down her body. 'You're soaked to the skin, Deb,' he said thickly. 'You should change out of those wet things.'
She glanced down at herself and flushed hotly, realising how her saturated top revealed what lay underneath. 'What am I supposed to change into?' she asked defiantly.
'My mother must have something suitable upstairs,' he said. 'I'll light this range. You go and change, then I'll light a fire in the other room and you can hang your wet clothes in front of it to dry.'
'You should change too.,' she pointed out. 'You're as wet as I am.'
'If you think I'm going about in my mother's clothes you can think again,' he said scathingly.
She laughed and went upstairs. His mother was obviously small, she thought in dismay, eyeing the clothes hanging there. They were all much too small for her. She flicked them along their rail and stared at a loose white smock hanging there. It was a little too short, but it was so loosely cut that it would at least cover her. She lifted it down and stripped, then put it on and looked at herself in the mirror uneasily. It only stretched to her thigh just above her knee. However, it covered her, she thought grimly. On the point of leaving she caught sight of a large green box from which dangled a tag clearly marked with Alex's name. The card made it clear that it was a birthday present. She smiled, then, curiosity getting the better of her, lifted the lid and peeped inside. Seeing it was a black quilted silk garment, she took the lid right off and pulled it out. It might do for him to wear while his wet clothes dried, she thought in excitement. Seeing, with a smile, what it was she carried the box down to the kitchen, her wet clothes dangling over her arm. She found Alex kneeling in front of the empty grate in the bare sitting-room. He looked at her over his shoulder, then his eyes narrowed. 'Very fetching,' he said roughly.
Ignoring the remark, Deborah held out the box. 'Guess what I found upstairs in the wardrobe.'
He looked at it frowning. 'It must be my birthday present. I can't open it now, she'd never forgive me. My birthday isn't for a week.'
'I peeped inside,' she admitted. 'I think you should open it. It's heaven-sent.'
Reluctantly Alex took the box. Opening it, he lifted out the black garment and a faint grin crossed his face. 'I see what you mean.' He put it back into his mother's box, pushed it on to the floor and turned hack to the work he was engaged upon. 'I've lit the range. You get on with the supper. I'm ravenous. Leave your clothes and I'll hang them out.'
'What on?' she asked anxiously. 'It's dangerous to leave wet clothes too near a fire.'
'There's an old brass fireguard in the woodshed,' he said. 'I'm going to get it in a minute. Deb, get on with the food.' 'You should change,' she protested.
'And get soaked every time I go outside?' he asked patiently. 'I've got a number of things to do before I change into dry things.'
She went through into the kitchen and began to inspect the range. It looked more complicated than it was, and she began to work out how it operated after a while. Alex had lit a good fire and the hobs were warming up nicely. She assembled all the things she needed and set to work.
Alex walked outside into the pouring rain a few moments later. He returned with a brass fireguard, sniffling at the delicious odour of the food. 'You're getting on well,' he commented. 'How's the range behaving?'
'Fine,' she said. 'But could you bring in some more wood later? It burns very quickly.'
'I'll bring in stacks of wood before I change,' he nodded. 'I don't fancy having to run outside in the rain in the dark. I've found some paraffin lamps out there, thank God, and enough paraffin, too.'
Deborah stared. 'Why do you want paraffin?'
He looked at her, sighing. 'Deb, it's clear you've never lived in the country. In a storm the electricity sometimes goes and then we'll need paraffin lamps.'
She groaned. 'This is getting too complicated!' Then she stared at him. 'Alex, the phone… why didn't I think of that? You can ring and get someone to collect us.'
His face was patient. 'I thought of that the first moment we arrived, but the phone is dead. Either Mother had it cut off or. . .'He shrugged. 'In this storm the line may be dead.'
She sighed. 'Oh, well…'
He carried the fireguard through the door and she went on with her cooking. Alex went back and forth after that, carting wood into the house, stacking it in a corner of the firelit room. The darkness was now falling faster. Deborah could not see the garden at all. Finally Alex washed his hands at the sink, shrugged, and said, 'I'm finished now. Have I got time to change before we eat? I'm frozen!'
'Of course,' she said anxiously. 'I hope you haven't caught a chill.'
'I'll take off my things beside the fire,' he said. 'I won't be a moment.'
She had finished cooking. The lobster bisque steamed fragrantly in two bowls. The omelettes were ready, kept warm between two plates above a saucepan of hot water. Giving him time to change, she carried the soup into the room, tapping on the door before she entered. 'Come in, Deb,' he said curtly. He was draping his wet clothes across the fireguard, she found, alongside her own. Steam rose from them. The air in the room was so cold she shivered. Alex gave her a grim look.
'We'll eat in the kitchen,' he said. 'It'll be warmer near the stove. The only chairs we have are my mother's studio
chairs. They're rickety and filthy, but at least we can sit down.'
Sighing, Deborah returned to the kitchen. A moment later Alex carried down the two chairs. Cane-bottomed, weak-legged, they looked very unsafe to her, but obediently she sat down on one. Alex sat, too, and they drank their soup. The range was giving the room a new warmth, although cold air and rain blew in through the window Alex had broken to make his entry. He looked it over irritably, then found the newspaper he had used to cover his head and stuffed it into the jagged hole. The room was appreciably warmer after that. They ate their omelettes in a silence which was not unpleasant. The sound of the storm outside made the lamplit kitchen more cosy, and Deborah's legs grew warmer as she held her toes towards the iron range. The range gave out a faintly smoky atmosphere which made her feel gradually sleepy. She leaned forward, warming her hands at it.
'How long do you think my clothes will take to dry?' she asked Alex absently.
'The sooner the better,' he said tightly.
She looked round at him in surprise.
His eyes were on the long bare expanse of her slender thighs, exposed by the brevity of the white smock. Through her lashes she surveyed him. His mother's birthday present had been a quilted dressing-gown. It covered no more of him than her smock did of her, but the black silk gave him a magnificence which made her heart quicken. 'I suppose your mother paints in this?' she asked him to divert his attention.
'Yes,' he said vaguely. His eyes lifted to her face. 'It looks better on you,' he said directly.
She smiled, flushing. 'Thank you .'
'Don't be coy, Deb,' he said tightly 'You know you're lovely.'
'It's pleasant to be told I am,' she said softly.
Alex stood up. 'We'd better wash up,' he said harshly.
She followed and they tidied the room together, working in harmony, hardly saying a word. Her mind was preoccupied with the problem of where they were to sleep. There was only one bedroom and she had no intention of sharing it with Alex. Could one of them use his mother's studio? The thought of clearing that clutter was too wearying at this hour. There was only the downstairs room.
Duel of Desire Page 9